Bishop Bernard Fellay, superior of the Society of St. Pius X, is pictured in 2012 near a photo of Pope Benedict XVI at the society's headquarters in Menzingen, Switzerland. (CNS photo/Paul Haring)

In
November 2013, the superior general of the Society of Saint Pius X granted an
interview in French, which was recorded on video and posted at www.dici.org together with a complete
transcript and an English translation.
Bishop Bernard Fellay’s opening remarks are about the new
pontificate.

The arrival of a new pope can be rather like
resetting our odometers to zero.
Especially with a pope who distinguishes himself from his predecessors
by his way of acting, speaking, and intervening and makes quite a
contrast. This can cause people to
forget the preceding pontificate.... It
is certain that the first interventions of the pope have caused a lot of
haziness....

The
SSPX bishop cites the recent measures taken to discipline the Franciscans of
the Immaculate (FFI) as an example of the attempt to “consign to oblivion” the
liturgical restoration begun by Benedict XVI with the 2007 motu proprio Summorum Pontificum. According to Fellay, it is “useless” to argue
that there is continuity between the pontificate of Pope Francis and that of
his predecessor.

The approach, the definition of the problems
that affect the Church is not the same!
This idea of introducing reforms that are even more extensive than
anything that has been done thus far. In
any case, you don’t get the impression that they will just be cosmetic, these
reforms of Pope Francis!

Many
of the Holy Father’s offhand comments, the Swiss prelate notes, have been
surprising, and offensive to “almost everyone, not just us, but all
conservatives in general.”

What the pope thinks personally does not
interest us; what we expect from him is that he be the voice of Christ and therefore
the voice of God, who repeats to us what God has said! And God did not say, “Who am I to
judge?”

Even
when the Pope’s impromptu remarks are “explained correctly” later on, “this creates
a climate of confusion; people are thrown off balance: they necessarily expect
clarity about morals, and even more about the faith; the two are connected.”
Fellay is very happy that Pope Francis often makes “statements that explain
very forcefully and very clearly that no one can go to heaven without true contrition
for one’s sins, no one can expect mercy from the Good Lord unless one seriously
regrets one’s sins…. But unfortunately they have already lost much of their
force because of the contrary statements.”
This, in the superior general’s opinion, has “spoiled [Francis’]
credibility.” “I think that he talks too
much…. You can no longer tell what is a private opinion and what is doctrine….”

Fellay
recognizes “many disparate elements” in the present pontiff and therefore
hesitates to draw conclusions. Clearly,
though, “Pope Francis is not a man of doctrine, he is a man of action, of
praxis. He is an extremely pragmatic
man, very close to the ground. You see
that in his sermons; he is close to the people and that is perhaps what makes
him very popular.” While it is unclear
how this will affect the Church, “you can tell that [the progressives] would
like to take advantage of it,” Fellay said.
At some point though, he thinks, they “will change their tune and say
that this is not what they were expecting.”

The Church at
large

What
has not changed, the SSPX prelate insists, is “the real situation of the Church,”
which is “sickened by the lethal virus of the modern world.” The post-conciliar fault lines “remain the
same,” he says, and those in power still repeat the party line: “The Council is a reinterpretation of the
Gospel in light of contemporary or modern civilizationthe pope has used both
terms.” To Fellay, this is
worrisome.

I think that we should begin to demand very
seriously a definition of what contemporary, modern civilization is. For us and for average mortals, it is quite
simply the rejection of God…. We see it
in the case of the European Union which in its Constitution refuses to
acknowledge its Christian roots. We see
it in everything that the media propagate, in literature, philosophy, art…. Then how can we reread the Gospel in that
light?

When
the new pope mentions the liturgical reform as one of the “marvelous fruits of
the Council,” “obviously that sends a chill down our spine, since the
liturgical reform was described by his immediate predecessor as the cause of
the crisis of the Church,” Fellay said. “For
the moment, nothing has been done to remedy the situation of deviance, of
decadence in the Church, absolutely nothing, no measure that affects the whole
Church.”

At
this point Fellay returned to a topic that he has often preached on: the apparent contradiction between Our Lord’s
promise that the gates of hell will not prevail against the Church, and the
current crisis in the Church. He
explains that, just as Jesus suffered in his Passion, so too the Church is now
suffering. The idea is scriptural; St.
Paul speaks about the “son of perdition,” the Antichrist. “This means that alongside the proclamation
of the promises” that the Church will never fail, there are “announcements of a
terrible time for the Church.” The dire
messages of Our Lady in her apparitions in La Salette are a modern reminder of
this New Testament teaching. “I think
that this will be one of the proofs of the divine origin of the Church,” Fellay
said. “When all human efforts are over, exhausted…that is precisely the moment
when [God] will act.”

Turning
to the trials of today’s Catholics, Fellay repeats St. Paul’s message: “stand
firm in faith.” “It is not enough to
attack or condemn errors.” Faith is not
“merely theoretical” but must be “informed
by charity.” Furthermore, the
faithful must do “their duty in their state of life.” This “will enable them to avoid
discouragement, bitter zeal and spite, and instead to experience joy, the
Christian joy that consists of knowing that God loves us so much that He is
ready to live with us, to live in us through grace.”

The raison d’être of the SSPX

The
duty of the Society of Saint Pius X, on the other hand, is to be true to the
aims of its founder, Fellay said.

Its primary concern is truly what keeps the
Church alive: the Mass…. The Mass really is the pump that distributes
throughout the Mystical Body the graces merited on the Cross…. By taking care of this heart, we take care of
the whole life of the Church.

If we want a restoration of the Church, and
certainly we do want it, that is where we must go. To the source, and the source is the
Mass. Not just any liturgy, but rather,
I mean to say, an extremely holy liturgy.

Bishop
Fellay declares that he is “profoundly indebted to Pope Benedict XVI for having
reinstated the [Traditional Latin] Mass.
That was [and] is of capital importance.” In order to promote the Mass of all ages, the
SSPX also has to promote the priesthood, “to form priests, to help priests.”

Fellay concludes the
interview by recalling the promise of Our Lady of Fatima: “In the end, my Immaculate Heart will
triumph.” “This is a certitude,” he
said. “This is not a question of faith; it is a word given by the Blessed
Virgin, and so we know very well what her word is worth!”

About the Author

Michael J. Miller

Michael J. Miller translated Introduction to the Mystery of the Church by Benoit-Dominique de la Soujeole, O.P., for Catholic University of America Press.

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